In My Day…

In my day…

We didn’t have 600 friends. Not 600 friends you kept up with and knew what they are doing, what they are eating and when they are having sex. That was handled with something we called gossip. Someone would walk up to you and start: “have you heard about such-and-such…” and you knew some secrets will be revealed following a detailed explanation of how you know the subject – “that tall guy who sat in the back of my cousin’s class when he was in the 3rd grade” or something like that. And then it became your civic duty and personal obligation to convey said gossip, adding your own observations and previously unknown details.

In my day…

We didn’t post love letters to our spouses and fiances for everyone to read. That would’ve required handwriting or typing said letter, then buying stamps and finding 600 friends and coworkers to mail it to. There was always an option of writing a message on an overpass, something like “Boris loves Natasha” but only the most daring of us were willing to hang under the bridge with a bunch of spray-paint cans tied to their pants, while sharing their message of love with the world. Even then every Natasha-dating Boris could’ve taken all the credit for this act of self-expression.

In my day…

There was no sexting. That would’ve required taking the naughty photos, schlepping your film to a processing place where they used a black sleeve to get the film out of your camera; then waiting for a couple of weeks for the prints to be done; it took extra time for the guy at the photo shop (a place, not a program) to make a set for himself. Then, if you didn’t lose your original determination, you had to take the offending photos to school and pass them to the recipients in person; or you could mail it to them, hoping their mom wouldn’t get to the mailbox first. Even then, people couldn’t easily distribute your likeness because we didn’t have copiers or scanners; one had to take a photo of your photo and start the process over. On the flipside, the pictures of your 14-year-old black-and-white out-of-focus breasts would continue to circulate in your school for a long time and still be sold by the blind people in long-distance trains to collect for a fake charity, even while you were using your aging breasts to feed your third child 15 years later.